


A Time for Everything

by emynii, ObliObla



Series: Nia & Obli's Whumptober 2019 [17]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-22 21:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21083186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emynii/pseuds/emynii, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObliObla/pseuds/ObliObla
Summary: Sometimes the hardest thing in the world is to say goodbye.For the Whumptober prompt: “Stay with me”





	A Time for Everything

**Author's Note:**

> There is a time for everything, and a time for every purpose under Heaven—  
A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,  
A time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build up,  
A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,  
A time to cast away stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,  
A time to gain and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away,  
A time to rend and a time to sew, a time to keep quiet and a time to speak,  
A time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.  
—Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

“Stay with me.” Lucifer was pleading; he knew he was. He didn’t remotely care. Let him make his pleas before the host of Heaven if he must.

“Lucifer, that’s not how this works,” Linda said softly. And she’d said that to him so many times in the years they’d known each other a laugh joined his harsh breaths. She tightened her hand around his, and he felt her fingers tremble.

“I don’t know what I’ll do without you,” he admitted quietly.

“You’ll keep going,” she told him a little sternly, and he hung his head, avoiding her glare.

They sat in silence for a moment before he inhaled sharply, nodding to himself. “My apologies, Doctor. Can I...can I get you anything? A glass of water? A—?”

She grabbed at his hand when he made to pull away. “Just sit with me?” She licked her chapped lips. “Please?”

“Of course.” He was awkward with this thing humans called grief—something he’d never felt before Earth; or maybe it was something he’d always felt.

The machines by Linda’s bedside beeped idly, and Lucifer found himself wishing that he could press a shining feather to her wounds and make her whole again. But they would only dull and fall, useless, to the ground. He began to hum, wrapping those more mundane noises in a warmer sound, and their hands swayed together in a simulacrum of dance.

“This has been a good life,” she said, suddenly, more to herself than him, looking out at nothing with dull eyes. She nodded to herself. “I think I’m happy with it.” She said it like it was a new couch for her office, a piece of artwork on her mantle, and his sorrow echoed in her joy.

“You are… the most brilliant human I’ve ever met,” Lucifer said, bleeding earnestness in a way that tore at him. But he wouldn’t be snide—not here, not with her.

“Damn right, I am.” But then she coughed, her fingernails digging reflexively into his palm, and a pain shot through him deeper than any gunshot or stab wound. Her lips were stippled red.

He pulled out a handkerchief and offered it to her, wishing he could offer more but not having the words.

She wiped at her mouth with trembling fingers and tipped her head away. “You know, I’m luckier than most.”

_ “How?” _ His voice shook.

“I know what’s coming,” she said simply. Her head tilted back toward him. “Or at least...” And there was fear on her face, now. The fear he’d been expecting ever since he came. The reason he had, for the most part, stayed away, too much a coward to tell her there was nothing he could do for her.

But courage bloomed in his chest—courage born of what she’d taught him—and he carefully brushed a strand of silvery hair from her face. “Hell can’t have you.”

She shivered, and he sighed.

“Mind, Heaven doesn’t _ deserve _ you, but… you’ll be happy there.”

“You never made it sound all that great,” she said with a pained chuckle.

“You’ll have Amenadiel, and Charlie. And your family. Well...” He shook his head. “Some of them, at least.”

She smiled, then. “When we met you’d never have said there could be _ anything _ good about Heaven.”

He chuffed out a laugh. “Yes, well, maybe I’ve gone senile in my old age.” He knew he looked no different, of course. Noticed it more with every passing year, as the humans he’d come to love lost the tightness in their skin, the color in their hair.

She sighed, the sound filled with an emotion he couldn’t identify—even after so many years with Linda, there were still some things about humans he didn’t understand—and lay back, pressed into the pillows. “I’m so tired, Lucifer.”

“Linda...”

“It just _ hurts _ .” Her eyes filled with tears, and some old impulse told him to run, to _ flee _ , or else to scoff and mock. But he wouldn’t do that to Linda—_couldn’t_—so he leaned forward, wrapped his arms around her, and held her as she cried.

“Be at peace,” he whispered into her hair.

He had arranged for the best care possible, but it still didn’t feel like enough when her frail hands clung to his back and he could feel her panting breaths against his neck.

When he pulled away, his cheeks were wet. “I’ll call Mazikeen in to— Linda?”

Her jaw was slack, her hands had fallen to the mattress, and the final spark in her eye had gone out.

He stood, panic tearing at the edges of his mind, until he felt the light-threads of her soul slip through his fingers, rising into the sky.

He blinked, and Azrael was standing at the foot of the bed. She nodded at him, and her wings extended outward.

He reached for one, hands shaking, and she disappeared. And she was gone. And Linda was gone.

And he was alone.


End file.
